"There's a way," he told himself. "It's bold and risky, but nobody'll suspicion me. I've kept straight here in the bluegrass. The mountains and all as ever knowed me thar are far away!"
But all who had known him in the mountains were not as far away as he supposed. Even as he spoke a dusty, weary figure in worn homespun, carrying a mammoth bundle, limping sadly upon bruised and blistered feet, came through the shrubbery, approaching the great stables from the far side of the big house-lot. Holton looked at this wayfarer with amazement.
"Madge Brierly!" he cried. "Gal, what are you a-doin' here?"
"Don't know's I've got any call to tell you," Madge replied, almost as much astonished at the sight of him as he had been at sight of her. Then she smiled roguishly at him. "Maybe you'll find out, though."
"I tell you this ain't no place for you," he admonished her. "Lordy! They takes up folks that looks like you, for vagrants. Take my advice, turn back to the mountings."
She looked at him with that same smile, still unimpressed.
For no reason which he could have well explained the man was almost panic-stricken in his keen anxiety to get the girl away from the old Layson homestead and the possibility of meeting those who dwelt therein.
"Here, if you'll go," he added, and thrust his hand into his pocket, "I'll give you money—money to help you on your way."
Still she smiled at him with that aggravating, meaning smile; that smile which he could by no means fathom and of which she scarcely knew the meaning. "No," she said, "I don't want your money. You couldn't hire me to leave the bluegrass till I've seen Frank Layson."
Seeing that she was determined, unable to conjecture what she had come down for, realizing, upon second thought, that it was most improbable that she had any tale to tell of him, he reluctantly gave way. "As you will, then," he said slowly. "But let me warn you that you won't be welcome hyar. You'll learn the difference between the mounting and the bluegrass folks. You'd better think it over and turn back."